Tenancy At Will
by LittleGreenBudgie
Summary: AU It was always a stupid move to argue back, since it had a tendency to escalate their disagreements into full-on fights, but Lucius had never been the best at holding his tongue. "Seven apartments in four years! Do you have any idea how hard this is for me?" RavenLucius


The church bells rang out at noon, when the sun shone from its zenith in the sky. The sound reverberated off the stone walls of the old chapel, creating a soul-shaking echo that made Lucius's heart swell with pride. It rattled the stained glass windows and shook the dust out of the rafters, but the bells couldn't move the bored red-haired man who sat at the back of the church.

Nothing about the ceremony ever seemed to faze him, Lucius thought sadly as he put away his sheet music and bid goodbye to the other choir singers. Raven came to church every fifthday, when Lucius sang, and every secondday, when Lucius sat in the frontmost row of pews and listened to Bishop Renault tell stories of friendship, pacifism, and forgiveness. He never seemed to really take anything to heart from those hymns and the legends of Saint Elimine and her band of heroes, though. A self-proclaimed atheist, he only really came to provide Lucius some degree of companionship, or at least an audience for his psalms. Lucius thought that perhaps Raven also came to feel some bit of connection to his long-dead family, since he always wore his father's old wristwatch on those days, but it was just as likely that he merely thought it added a bit of formality to his plain clothes. It any case, it didn't affect his general apathy one iota, for he still scribbled stats on Caelin's football team on the back of receipts during the service.

It didn't mean he didn't pay some attention, though; he may not have moved as a half-dozen other singers walked by, but he looked up as Lucius neared him. His eyes crinkled a little, as close to a smile as he put on anymore, and Lucius grinned back.

"Are you ready to go?"

"Yes, sir," Lucius replied—an ongoing joke between them, something that twelve years and nearly as many towns hadn't wholly worn out. Their latest home held up better than the four before it, but Lucius could tell that something had gotten under Raven's skin lately, and he hoped they wouldn't have to leave. It was a story that had grown achingly familiar to him. They'd find a new territory, a new city, and they'd stay for maybe four months before Raven started growing quiet and irritable, and invariably, they would pack their suitcases and end up a few hours away in a matter of days. Lucius loved him dearly, but it was enough to make him grind his teeth and raise his voice every time.

For the moment, though, he was content to keep quiet and follow Raven. It had always been a chore, since he walked with quick, impatient strides that Lucius always had to struggle to keep up with. He never looked back to see if he followed him, either; it was one of many things that Lucius just had to accept, harder to deal with than the constant static of football on the radio but easier than the shivering nightmares that made him twitch like a rattlesnake's tail and kick all the blankets off the bed. Lucius never said a word about any of those, because Raven didn't bother him about going to church twice a week or the cost of his medicine, which made it hard for either to set aside any money for the future. It made for an easy, albeit strange, sort of peace.

…of course, that wasn't to say they didn't fight.

"You came in late last night," Raven started as they stepped onto the streets. In Araphen, ramshackle was the norm, and neither blinked at the boarded-up windows and the trash on the streets. Lucius's little sedan, rusted and dented, fit right in with the rest of the territory, but they still locked the doors every time they left. Car theft wasn't exactly unheard of, even in front of a chapel.

"I had some unexpected paperwork that I needed to finish. I'm sorry it kept me," he said.

"You should've called. I was worried."

"I didn't think it would run as late as it did. As I said, I'm sorry."

Lucius usually let Raven drive, but he could already sense his mounting frustration, and so he headed around to the driver's side. Raven's eyebrows lowered, but he didn't say anything on that front. He slid into the passenger seat, sitting straight enough to bring pride to his old etiquette teacher, but a vein stood out in his neck, and his breath came heavily. Lucius took a deep breath and counted to ten.

"I didn't know if you were safe or not. Remember when you got mugged? What if that happened again?"

"Calling you wouldn't stop that," he returned, keying the ignition. It was always a stupid move to argue back, since it had a tendency to escalate their disagreements into full-on fights, but Lucius had never been the best at holding his tongue. "And I _said_ I was sorry."

"It would give me peace of mind, is what it would do," he muttered, shaking his head.

"You don't call when you're running late, sir," he said. He spoke quietly, but the damage had been done; he could hear a rustle of fabric as Raven sat up a little straighter. Lucius had his eyes on the road, but he could imagine it—his jaw would be squared just so, his nostrils slightly flared, his eyes narrowed a fraction of an inch, dragonfire-red, with his arms crossed resolutely against his chest. He reached over and set his hand on Raven's knee, giving it a gentle squeeze of reassurance.

"I can take care of myself," Raven said at last.

"So can I!"

"No, you can't! You think you can, but you keep getting yourself into dangerous situations. Araphen is too unsafe for you, so we should go. Head somewhere less…this."

He gestured vaguely around him. Lucius gritted his teeth and tried to resist the temptation to park the car and refuse to move until Raven dropped the stupid idea. Uprooting their entire lives just to satisfy some foolish sense of wanderlust didn't sit well with him any better than it had every other time; rather, each seemed to put down another block of stone in his resolution's wall.

"They need me here," Lucius said. "The worse-off it is, the more they need me."

"You can't save them all. You'll help just as much in one place as any other."

"The kids here need me like they didn't in Khathelet or Caelin, sir. They're…They're like I was," he murmured. A low blow, perhaps, and one that had managed to quiet his partner several times before—even Raven couldn't just shrug off the circumstances of his childhood.

"I need you, too," Raven said after a pause. It wasn't quiet or sentimental from him, but rather a statement of the facts. "If I lost you—"

Lucius's breath caught, the same way it always did then the topic came up. He swallowed his concern and shook his head.

"I'm not Priscilla. I'm not going anywhere."

Raven's family had been investigated by social workers back when he had turned nine. His parents used to work for upwards of eight hours a day, and they would leave Raven and six-year-old Priscilla at home alone. Priscilla was often in ill health, and one day, she had passed out while playing outside. Someone called the paramedics, and although Raven had the presence of mind to lie and claim their parents had just stepped out for a minute, Priscilla did not. After a lengthy examination, it was deemed that they weren't fit to have custody of her, and she was taken away to live with family friends. It was part of the reason that he didn't wholly approve of Lucius's choice of professions, but that had been a battle that Raven lost.

Lucius thought back to when his own parents died, and how lucky he had been that a social worker had found him, three years old and alone, and helped soothe his fear. That woman had been an absolute hero.

"I saw Priscilla on the news the other night. I guess you wouldn't have seen it, since you were still at work," he quietly said.

"Oh…Is she all right?" Lucius asked, thoughts of murder victims and larceny trials and abused women flickering in lightning-flashes through his mind.

"…Yeah. She looked like she was doing fine. I mean, she was getting interviewed over some murder out in the bad part of Santaruz, Sacaen-side, but she wasn't really involved. Apparently the guy tried to mug her and ended up involved in some Sacaen gang fight."

"Do you think she lives out there? …Is that why you want to leave?"

"No," Raven replied, too quickly. "It said she was from Etruria, not anywhere in Lycia. I was more thinking about…Forget it. It's foolish."

"If it's important to you, it isn't quite so foolish, sir," he said mildly as they pulled into the lot in front of the apartment. He didn't move to get out, though; waiting Raven out remained one of the most effective tactics in getting him to talk about something difficult.

True to form, Raven waited a few breaths and said, "She was with some guy, probably about the same age as her. Boyfriend, brother, I don't know who he was, but they stood really close. He was, well…scholarly. Thick glasses, nice clothes, pale as death. You know what I mean."

Lucius pushed his own round glasses up his nose.

"He was more like me than you, is that it?"

"…Yeah. He wasn't exactly doing a good job of keeping her safe out there. Santaruz is too dangerous for her—or you—to be roaming around. Ever since Governor Helman died, it's gotten bad. She shouldn't have been there."

He tried to ignore the continued implication that he couldn't take care of himself, he really did. Raven probably just worried about his fits, which filled his head with static and made his throat close up. He probably just wanted to make sure that nothing happened to him, nothing that could take him away, like his sister or his parents. He had all the reasons in the world to be concerned, so really, Lucius shouldn't say anything.

"We were out there a few months ago, though, and it was fine," he argued.

"It wasn't, clearly, since Priscilla got hurt! 'Girl searches for long-lost brother, finds gang violence instead.' That was the headline. She was out there following some stupid dream of me. No more danger, Lucius. I'm not risking either of you. We're leaving and that's final."

It was the "that's final" that made Lucius really dig in his heels. He had uprooted himself from so many communities that he liked, working with people that he just started to know, and always, he had been patient. The same argument had played out again and again, and maybe that wasn't good enough.

"I'm not moving away now, okay? I like it here. They need me, and I like the church, and I have friends that I'm really getting along with. I don't want to leave."

"I do, though. I don't like it here at all."

"You don't like _anywhere_!" he shouted. "Seven apartments in four years! Do you have any idea how hard this is for me?"

Raven unbuckled his seatbelt, got out of the car, and slammed the door with enough force to rock the vehicle, leaving Lucius frozen with shock. He scrambled for his bag and his keys and his sheet music, then he tumbled out of the car. In scant seconds, Raven had already made it across the lot and halfway up the stairs, walking quicker than even his stupid too-quick strides usually took him. Lucius had to run to catch up to him.

"Raymond!"

"Don't call me that. I've told you before, don't ever call me that," he snapped.

"And I've told you many, many times that you should really just listen to me!"

Raven had the presence of mind to hold his tongue until they were both in the apartment, then he shut the door and slid the latch into place with a furious "click."

"I do listen to you, and you know that."

"You're not listening to me now," Lucius said, staring at him. Raven glared back for one beat, two, three, then he dropped his gaze to the floor.

"I'm sorry," he said after a long pause. "We don't have to move today."

"I would prefer that we didn't have to move for a long time. Not until we're done with apartments."

"What the blazes do you mean by that?"

"…You know…somewhere for us to settle down," Lucius said haltingly. "A nice little place with a kitchen painted yellow and a garden out front, like we used to talk about. I know you haven't brought it up in a while, now, but I didn't forget."

"That was a long time ago, Lucius. Situations change."

Lucius took a seat on the edge of the sofa, undoing his hair from its ponytail and letting it spill over his shoulders and down his back. With the way Raven kept talking, he just knew that he'd find streaks of grey through his hair in a matter of years, even if he was only twenty-four.

"We've lived together for four years now, sir, just the two of us. I really don't know what you mean by 'situations change.' Do we need to talk?" he softly asked.

"Elimine, no, not like that. You're all I have left, you know, but I'm just…It's frightening. I shouldn't think like that, but you remember what happened to Cornwell."

Lucius's heart contracted painfully in his chest. They had both been lucky that they had been walking back from the movies when the Molotov cocktails broke through his house's windows. He could still remember the crack of flames and the hot embers that kicked up in flurries around the building, stinging his eyes and his bare arms. Filled with verve and reckless courage, Raven had rushed back into the building, shoving Lucius to the side when he tried to stop him. His voice rose feebly over the crashing of the roof caving in, calling for his parents over and over before he choked on the smoke and ash. It took every ounce of strength Lucius had to pull him back out, grip talon-strong on his wrist.

Raven's parents hadn't made it. He still couldn't forgive himself over it, and for a year, neither he nor Lucius even had any idea why it had happened. It took a hazy lead on an Ostia conspiracy-theory website to eventually uncover the truth of the matter; Cornwell Investment Bank had been running a pyramid scheme for nearly three years before the whole thing collapsed upon itself and left their clients bankrupt and the money locked away in a secure Ilian bank. Some of the furious victims had taken justice upon themselves, and left one broken teenager on the streets, the coals of his ruined house smoldering in his heart.

"Ours will be okay," Lucius said.

Raven dropped down onto the couch next to him, lying on his back with his head pillowed in Lucius's lap. He idly ran his fingers through Raven's hair while he thought, watching the dark red slip over his thin, pale fingers.

"I know that."

"You also know, then, that you needn't worry about me keeping secrets. If we must go down, we go down together, sir," he replied.

"I suppose you're right. I'm needlessly worrying," he said.

"Just as you're needlessly worrying about the dangers of this territory, I hope you know. And if Priscilla does try to find you here, then the longer we stay, the more connections we'll build, and it will be easy for her to find you. That way, she won't end up wandering the streets aimlessly, don't you think?" Lucius continued, softly and slowly.

A low chuckle rumbled through Raven's chest.

"You've talked me into a corner again, huh? You always were good at that."

Lucius tensed, but before he could speak, Raven continued:

"Hush, it wasn't meant as an accusation. I'd likely be dead a dozen times over if you couldn't manage to outsmart me. We'll stay in Araphen until we can afford a better place, or until circumstances force our hands. Does that work for you?"

"It's enough," Lucius said, letting out his breath. The weary smile of a veteran coming home touched his lips. "When do we start, sir?"

Raven sat up just enough to brush a rough kiss to his jaw.

"Now's as good as ever."


End file.
